New challenge: 100 proposals in 100 days

Hey! I just launched a fun new challenge for myself as a way to generate new opportunities in my business. Check it out… and maybe even join in with a similar challenge in your business.

Starting today, and going for the next 100 days, I will send out 100 proposals to potential clients, joint venture partners, and magazine publishers. In each proposal, I’ll recommend some kind of project or collaboration that will ideally lead to income-generating work by the end of the year. I own a couple of brands and the proposals could be for work in any of these brands.

I’m publishing this on June 27th (day 1). If my calculations are correct, the 100th day will be October 4th.

FIVE RULES TO KEEP ME ON TRACK

A proposal is a customized offer to do a specific project for a specific client or JV partner. Therefore, requests for work from clients do not count as proposals and blanket offers to multiple prospects at the same time do not count as proposals. (However, these can be turned into a proposal if I try to sell an additional, higher-cost custom service to an individual).

A proposal must be sent off before 11:59 PM in order to count toward that day’s proposal.

Proposals can be to new or existing clients or JV partners or publishers but it must for new work. i.e. I can’t just pitch the topic of an article that I’m already planning to write.

Proposals must be for income-generating work to be paid by the end of 2013.

I must be able to do the work I’m proposing. No throwaway proposals!

WHY AM I DOING THIS?

There are a couple of reasons:

First, I’m fully booked and don’t need to look for new work. That puts me in a very cool position to grow my business in ways that I choose. Because I don’t need to market my business to find work in order to cover my bills, I can focus on building other opportunities. (So maybe you’re wondering why I chose income-generation as one of my rules. The reason is: I don’t want to get to day 75 or 80 and be tired of this challenge and then start jamming out proposals for guest blogs because I just want the challenge to be finished. There’s nothing wrong with guest blogs but that’s not where I want this challenge to take me).

Second, I’m very competitive with myself and I love to create challenges that push me out of my comfort zone. This is particularly welcome since a lot of my work has been focused on non-income-generating business building efforts (writing my book, researching a bunch of stuff, performing real estate due diligence, lots of administrative work, etc.). In other words, this challenge is going to get me back into the regular habit of pitching regularly.

THINKING AHEAD

I’m pretty excited about this right now so I think the first few days will be easy.

The hard part will be when I’m super-busy and I realize at 11PM that I haven’t sent out a proposal yet… and I’m not even sure where to send it. This will also be a challenge with some other social commitments and guests we have visiting in the near future. Therefore, I need to work ahead on this and start finding topics and potential people to pitch to, and it might mean preparing a couple of proposals on one day to be sent out on a schedule.

The other hard part will be if there is a very positive, rapid response to my proposals. It’s not likely going to happen but what if my first 10 proposals are accepted? I’m kind of screwed for the other 90. I don’t think that will happen. Some won’t respond; some will respond with a “no”; some will take a while to respond; and those that do respond may not need my work done immediately. I’m taking this risk because I think it’s likely going to be okay (at least for most of the time).

I’ll blog about my progress from time to time (but not everyday because who wants to hear about it that often?!?).

JOIN IN!

Care to join in? Tweak these rules for yourself (i.e. maybe you don’t want the income rule because you want to send out 100 guest blogging proposals — that’s cool). If you’re going to play along, put your challenge in the comments below.

This slightly out-of-focus picture is my 100 proposals in 100 days tracking sheet…